The Flame of Life

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Maria was in the kitchen, and he asked her where Enid was.

‘Don’t know,’ she said sulkily.

He put the perfume on the dresser, and saw some letters resting against a mug. The first had no stamp on, only his name in Enid’s handwriting. He took this and several others into the living-room, and saw at a glance that none conveyed the overdue cheque from Teddy Greensleaves, so he ripped Enid’s letter quickly open.

‘Dear Albert,’ he read, ‘I have gone away with Dean and I’m not coming back, not to live with you, anyway. I’ve left you and the children so that I can live another life, because I’m in love with Dean and he’s in love with me. By the time you get this we’ll be on the sea for Ostend, because we are going to Turkey, to live there a while. After then, I don’t know where. I drove the Morris to the station at Bedford, and left it in the car park to collect whenever you like with the spare keys.

‘I suppose you’ve found out by now about the cheque from your gallery. I signed your name on it, and put it into my account, so that we’ll have a bit of money to start us off with. We also took the money from the tobacco tin in your studio. I hope you don’t mind, but I had to do it this way because I didn’t want any fuss. I know you’d have given me the money if I asked for it, but I couldn’t face the bother when I told you what it was for. In any case, I have worked for it all these years.

‘I’m sure you won’t mind me going away, because it was finished a long time ago. There’s no more we can find out’ about each other. It’s plain a mile off, and we both know it. It’s a big wrench for me to leave the kids, but I’m sure you’ll take care of them. I know I can rely on you for that at least. Well. Dean is waiting in the car, and getting impatient, so I have to go.’

He threw the letter aside. It was fairly short for such good riddance. He could hardly believe his luck. Free at last. Locked into the domestic prison at eighteen and now, at forty-four, liberated by the armies of adolescent passion! Released by a curt letter from his skedaddling all-in-all wife! But did she think you only lived as man and wife so as to get to know each other? She must have got such a shallow idea from that flat-faced little bastard Dean.

What a noble creature she had proved herself at last, going away with the first mug she falls for. He really couldn’t think too badly of her, though they had been a long time together, and she had taken a lot of his life with her, just as she had left a good bit of hers behind.

He sat for a while, till he heard Rachel and Paul coming in from school. Myra was calling them to order, and he thought that at least there was one good woman in the world. A spiky bomb was lodged in his entrails, pressing on every pipe and vein as if, should it explode, his eyes would be the first to go. Maybe she had taken none of his life with her at all, and that as soon as the boat left England the full weight of what she was doing would cut every minute she had spent with him out of her system forever.

Obviously they had been planning it for weeks, and he had been so blindly engrossed in his painting that he’d not noticed a thing. Yet even if he hadn’t been working they’d have been brewing it up. He couldn’t blame his art for everything, and that was a fact. They’d hated each other at times, but he loved her, just the same, and loved her still when the pain wore off for a moment, and before it came back.

But he had to pay some price for getting rid of her, and if that price was to have his love destroyed then long live love! It was good that life could be lived again and again no matter what happened, providing the love of life remained. He was glad it had stayed long enough with Enid to let her go off for a new start with a youth of eighteen. She deserved happiness after the bleak decades with him. And if he wanted revenge for her going away, he was already assured of it in the sort of person she’d decided to live with. It was an unworthy thought, and he was sorry it came, but it was some comfort at this desolate moment.

She’ll be back, he thought. Maybe she changed her mind at Dover, when the sea breeze hit her, and will come haring home again. Not if I know it. I hope not. I don’t want her. Enid’s not one to suffer making up her mind for nothing, and neither am I. The older you get the more you learn not to waste anything. Waste not, want not, as the terrible old adage goes. She’s on her way. I’m not on mine, though. She’d had a few weeks to get ready for this, so I expect she’s further on the road to recovery and change than I am, but my road will lengthen, as soon as I come out of this black spin, and then there will be no more turning back for me, either.

Life felt strange. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to get up from the armchair and go to the garden, to savour his newly awarded freedom, but he couldn’t, because Enid wouldn’t be there for him to tell his impressions to when he came back afterwards. It was like thinking what an interesting experience dying would be, but then realising that you’d have no one to share it with.

He stood, and put the letter in his pocket. He swayed, as if about to sit down again, then he straightened his back and walked into the kitchen — the hub of the house.

Dawley saw him, upright and pale, but with a smile on his lips, and Handley could tell that Dawley knew when he looked at him. ‘She walked out,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you see ’em?’ — as if Frank might have stopped them.

He poured Handley some tea. ‘They drove by me and Myra when we went for a walk up the hill. We realised what was happening, but there was nothing we could do.’

‘Who walked out, Dad?’ Rachel asked.

‘Your mother.’

‘Shall you tell her off?’

‘She won’t be coming back.’

‘Dean as well?’ Paul asked.

‘Him too,’ Handley spat. ‘Lace that tea with whisky.’

Frank opened the bottle. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ Handley said. ‘It’s all God’s work. That is to say, mine. We ask for whatever happens to us. But I’m still sound in wind, limb and brainbox.’

‘That’s fine, then.’ Handley had been dealt a near mortal blow, but Dawley knew he would survive — as one had to.

‘I’ll sit for an hour or two in John’s room,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a bit of comfort there. If you see Mandy or Adam, tell ’em their mother’s gone on a trip with Dean — to Turkey. They’ll understand. I’ll explain it to ’em though, if they don’t come in till later.’

He walked upstairs, slowly, one step at a time, not so much out of shock and grief, but so that he wouldn’t upset his teacup brimming with whisky. He stood for a moment by John’s door, then opened it and went in.

The first subliminal flash showed him the old room, the altar and shrine and relics of his saintly brother’s life, among which he’d wanted to efface himself and take comfort in recalling that more cosmically devastated love. He needed to sooth his own galling hurt that to his shame and chagrin was taking him over more and more. But he stepped back almost to the landing.

The room was spare and neutral, and had nothing to do with John or any memories at all. Books, maps, radio gear had gone. Only a small photograph of John had been left on the shelf. It was as if the room had been scooped out by lightning. The neatness and order had created a prison — or a hospital.

He wondered who was trying to drive him mad, but laughed at the idea and drank half his whisky-tea. He took out a long thin cigar and lit it, then sat in the wooden armchair. He was proof against madness. One shock destroys another. This desecration of John’s life could only be the combined work of Cuthbert and Ralph. It was a cauterisation of memory.

He sat with hands over his head, as if shells were exploding all around him. They were bursting thick and fast. He’d have to get away from this house and go to Lincolnshire, back to the ancient battlefield now grown over and green where he had spent most of his life with Enid and their children. He didn’t really want to be close to her any more, but he needed some connection with reality — which was always the past.

He regretted John’s revolver being dropped into Gould’s Lake. If it had still been in the cigar box he might have used it, and followed his brother’s footsteps along the only road that honour and a cure for pain demanded. But he pissed on honour: he didn’t need honour to show how brave he was. Such pain as this could be over-lived, though he didn’t think so at the moment.

Yet it was a pity the revolver had gone, he thought, lifting his head, because no matter what his arguments he might still have killed himself. There was something to thank Maricarmen for, after all.

He finished the whisky in a few more minutes, and the stripped room began to feel spiritually healing. In the old version he might have given himself up to the agony of his loss, but in this strange chamber he was not so sure that there would have been any good in that, because there were certain people on earth who had lost far more.